


Bad Day at Bad Rock Medical Center

by Splotcher



Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team (TV), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:06:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splotcher/pseuds/Splotcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hospital au! in which the A-team are doctors.<br/>Prompt from stage master: The A-Team all work in a hospital. Boss is the head doctor (brain surgeon?), Face is a plastic surgeon, HM is a psychologist, while BA is either a physical therapist or (even better) a child physician. And there is much inter-departmental flirting and snarking. I love H/F and BA/M, but will take anything in this verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It begins

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unfinished work, that I love, but left behind due to RL. If I archive it here, maybe I will get back to working on it, I hope.
> 
> Anyway, comments and thoughts are always appreciated. I don't own the A-team.
> 
> \--Splotch

He has to sip his coffee this time. As a doctor, he knows massive amounts of caffeine are detrimental to his system, and he always has to be in top shape. When he told people this, they often scoffed, asked him if his job was all that tough, and what was he doing? Brain surgery?

He always got a kick out of saying yes. Yes, it is brain surgery.

Of course, while a great deal of pleasure was gained from people’s expressions from getting to use that line, it wasn’t all fun and games. This month had been hell. Hospital was going under. Turned out it wasn’t the patients or the doctors at fault. Dr. Skerritt, former director, had a particularly bad habit of embezzling money and a few other nasty practices that had the entirety of the Bad Rock police department looking for him. Bad Rock wasn’t a big city, but few people could boast that they had several hundred police officers combing the streets looking for them.

Russel Morrison had just given him the news. He was to be keeping an eye on all departments, not just his own. Russ was an old friend, had been retired from his position of head of diagnostics for four years.

Brought back by the panicked phone calls of the board of directors.

Before Dr. Skerritt had left, he had hired on dozens of new staff-the old ones had felt the change in weather, abandoned ship. He was sorry he didn’t leave with them, but his pride had forced him to stay. He wasn’t ready to stop fighting for his job. This hospital. His home. 

The hospital boasted five floors and two basement levels. It was big for Bad Rock. The builders were sure that it would be a matter of time before the city caught up to the complex, but time hadn’t caught up yet. The top two floors were storage. The second basement the same. First floor was diagnostics. Second was surgery and labs. The third was patient care.

The basement level held the morgue and the psyche ward. In his opinion, that was a bad pair, but after the incident where the patients got out and destroyed a lab and caused numerous small fires, the second floor psyche ward had been abolished. The directors didn’t want to mix patients. And the basement could be secured to make sure there were no escapes.

It held merit, but he still would have preferred to keep mentally fragile people away from the dead bodies. It wasn’t really safe.

Though, the same could be said about the new staff.

He could only guess that Dr. Skerritt had hired them on as a last gesture to the hospital he was ruining. Many were probably convicts, others of questionable morality, and some so shifty he would have fired them on the spot if the board of directors hadn’t put a hiring and firing freeze on them.

‘Make do with what you have until we can straighten things out,’ they said.

Which proved none of them knew a damn thing about running a hospital. He had spent his morning scaring the hell out of a pair of doctors he caught rummaging the pharmacy for recreational purposes and another one stealing personal belongings from Dmitri Shastovich, a patient that came in regularly for checkups on his heart.

Everything was going downhill. And he had no support base. Half the nursing staff was terrified of the newcomers. The other half either part of the problem or too ambivalent to care.

And he hadn’t even gotten halfway through the list yet.

 

He sighed, downed the rest of his coffee in a few gulps. He needed to head up to the surgical ward. He had two newcomers specializing in plastic surgery. He didn’t want to think of the implications of that.

He took the elevator, waited as it took him to the second floor. As he got off, a giant man with a Mohawk stepped on, holding several files that looked comically small in his hands. He did not catch the man’s nametag on his scrubs, but the man was courteous. 

He hoped that if that was one of the doctor’s on his list, he was a keeper. He would freely admit that he wouldn’t want to fire that one. At least, not without back up. 

The two surgeons he was assessing today were in their office. They were both sitting in a totally relaxed pose, smiling and nodding, getting along well.

Obviously, they hated each other. This may turn ugly. He made a note of this while he introduced himself.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I am Doctor John Smith. I am the chief surgeon here. From here on out, you answer to me. Which one of you is Dr. Thomas Angel?”

“I am.” Blonde. Very photogenic. A big smile and blue eyes with absolutely no hint of malice.

Yeah. This was going to get ugly.

“I’m putting you on rotations with Dr. Sullivan. You learn from her what our procedures and rules are. I take it you are Dr. Templeton Peck?”

“Yep.”

Caramel hair. Innocent smile. Hint of challenge. Also very photogenic. 

“You’re with me today. I will be teaching you rules and regulations. Both of you will be expected to pull your own weight. I will not tolerate laziness from my surgeons. You will do your jobs and you will do them well, or so help me I will make your lives a living hell. Do I make myself clear?”

Two compliant, understanding nods.

He didn’t trust them one bit.

*^*^*^*^*^^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^**^

 

Two fights between orderlies and having to ‘discuss’ the meaning of patient care to a nurse later, he was beginning to regret staying, home or no.

“Is it usually this peaceful and understanding, here?” Dr. Peck said, dodging a medical cart as it rattled past.

“No. This is a recent development. I assume you already know about what happened with Dr. Skerritt?”

“Messed up stuff.”

“We’re in a hiring and firing freeze. We have to make do with what we have.”

“Being kind of forthcoming with me here, John.”

“I believe in letting people know where they stand. And until we know each other better kid, I’m Dr. Smith.”

He could feel the kid roll his eyes behind him. “And don’t roll your eyes. This is the Nurse’s station, talk to Rosalita if you need supplies. We don’t get too many plastic surgery jobs up here, you may have to help out. You have a problem with that?”

“With the nurses? Absolutely not.” a hint of laughter in the younger man’s voice.

“What you do on your own time is none of my concern. But if you cause waves here with the nursing staff, I will put you on the most busy, mind numbingly boring shifts I can think up. Clear?” He waited a moment, then turned to face the other doctor. “I said, are we clear?”

Rebellion was peering out under that calm façade. But he just smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. “Crystal, John.”

He waited patiently, fixing his subordinate with a calm gaze. After a moment, Dr. Peck’s face colored slightly.

“I understand, Dr. Smith.”

“Good. I’m leaving you with Casper, he’ll show you the rest of the hospital.” He nodded to the male nurse manhandling supplies onto a cart.

“Always leave your new hires with the nurses, Dr. Smith?”

“I do today.” He turned to leave, heading towards pediatrics. A voice shouts after him.

“Are you always this much of a jerk?”

“Prerequisite for head of surgery, Dr. Peck.” He just keeps walking, making a note next to Peck’s name.

The first doctor he checks in on is Dr. Bartholomew. The older man was congenially handing out lollipops to the kids. His conversation with the man was brief, and he seemed to be a genuinely good choice for the pediatrics ward. But his eyes were bloodshot and there was a copious amount of peppermint scent on his breath.

Possible drinking problem. Not good.

He made a note of that as he went down the list, stopping in with Dr. Stewart. Dr. Emily Stewart had braved the change like he did, and seemed to be taking it in stride. Her blonde hair was pinned neatly back, and she was smiling as she took a young boy’s temperature.

“Now remember, no playing outside anymore unless you have a coat! I have to see Dr. Smith. You stay right there!”

She steps out of the exam room, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. 

“This place is going to the dogs.” She wipes her brow with the back of her hand. “My supplies haven’t gotten here and I asked that orderly three hours ago.”

“I’ll check in on it. How are your new hires?”

“Dr. Bartholomew may be a keeper, but I think he’s on the juice. I saw him sneak off into a supply closet with a flask of something. He came back out pretty unsteady. I like Dr. Martins. He’s good with kids, but he’s a little too patient, I’m worried there’s something going on there. And Dr. Baracus, hell, I don’t know what to think.”

“He a trouble maker?”

“No…do you have a minute? Let me take care of my patient, and I’ll show you.”

After twenty minutes and one relieved parent later, she ushers him down a few doors. 

Inside the waiting room, there were several very apprehensive parents watching wide eyed as their children surround a giant black man with a Mohawk, poking at his tattoos and touching his hair.

The same man he had walked by on the second floor earlier that day.

The children appear to have no fear whatsoever of him, and the big man seems happy just to talk to them about how they were feeling and what they hoped to have happen and a few dozen other things.

John has to admit, the sight was pretty mind-boggling.

“The kids love him, the parents are terrified of him…he’s competent, but unless they get to see that in action, none of the parents will want to have him see their children.”

He nods, still fascinated by the fact that several of the children were so comfortable with the big man that they were now climbing on top of him, which he allowed.

“Well, set him up on rotation. That way, they’ll get to see.”

“What if they immediately ask for another doctor?”

“Think they’d say that to his face? Just don’t be in the area when they figure it out.”

“You are an evil, sneaky man John.” She shakes her petite head.

“I just plan ahead. I have to go down to the basement next. Have you talked with Jonathon?”

“Yeah, He’s got two new doctors, but apparently they don’t like each other and there’s some trouble with their neighbors.”

“The morgue?!” He hated that place. And the man that worked there.

“Keep your voice down! There are children here. And yes, they are having problems with the coroner and his autopsy ghouls. The directors should have fired that man before Skerritt took the money and ran.”

He sighs. Just another item to add to his long running list-a feud between departments.

“Well, I might as well get it over with. What have you heard about Dr. Reed’s new staff?” 

“Not too much. He picked up three autopsy assistants, which is way too much for the amount of traffic that goes through there. One of them is a big burly one with black hair and an anchor on his arm, there a woman with a bad attitude, and I’ve only seen the tall one a couple of times. He doesn’t like to look at people and he stays in the shadows a lot. Maybe he thinks he’s a vampire.”

“I’ll check the bank. Thanks for your help. Let me know if there’s any trouble.”

“No problem. Oh, and, John?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful down there. Reed is leech.”

He just nods and continues on.

*^*^*^*^**^*^*^*^**^^*^*^*^**^

 

As soon as he walks through the door to the psyche ward, he is set upon by a crazed man. 

Wearing scrubs.

“Come with me! We have to fight the invasion! The ducks can’t win this time!”

The man, though shorter and slender, manages to drag him behind a table where a patient has set a make shift barrier.

“You saved him just in time!”

“I know! These crazy new guys don’t even know what they’re getting into! That’s why they live upstairs!”

He’s speechless, watching the two men perform some bizarre ritual. They seemed to be playing make believe complete with imaginary guns and bombs.

“Quick! Lob a grenade! There’s a mallard!”

“No!” The man in scrubs waves his hands animatedly, excitement bringing out an unmistakable country accent. “We hafta save those for the actual ducks! The females are by far the more dangerous of the species!”

“Dr. Murdock? Dr.-For god’s sakes, what are you doing?!” A blonde woman had just appeared around the corner.

The patient let out a scream. “They’re impersonating human females!”

He began pelting her with the cushions from a chair. She tries to block, then retreats, yelling.

“I’ll be telling Dr. Richter about this!”

“Yeah, well, he knows the differences between ducks and humans, so I should be safe!” The man in scrubs (Dr. Murdock?) yells back cheekily.

The patient turns, wide eyed. “I did it! The ducks are retreating! I did it, H.M.!”

“Good job man! I knew you could do it! Remember this victory!”

“I will!”

He knows that his mouth must be wide open by now because this has to be the most bizarre visit he’s ever had to the psyche ward.

“It’s time for lunch. Why don’t you go join the others, I’ll help this newbie get over the shellshock.”

“H.M…”

“Yeah?”

“What about the bodies? What if they come back to life?” the patient gestures to an empty spot on the floor.

“I’ll take care of them. Morgue is right next door, we’ll freeze the bastards. Newbie’s gotta do something.”

Apparently pleased with the plan, the patient walks away happily.

The man in scrubs grins at him, offers him a hand up. He takes it warily.

“Nice to see some other brave soul enter the battlefield. Name’s H.M. Murdock. My friends call me H.M or Murdock. Pleased to meet you.” Dr. Murdock shakes his hand, then sets about clearing the barrier and setting the tables back upright.

“I’m Doctor John Smith. May I ask what that was all about?”

“Oh…jus’ a little role-playing. He sees ducks coming after him, I told him we should mount an assault against them, it ended up over here somehow. Anyway, got other patients. Can I help you?”

“No…I came down to see Dr. Richter.”

“Yeah well, you just follow the angry harpy, you’ll find him.” The doctor strode off, whistling.

His clipboard of names with spaces to write notes seems a little inadequate all of a sudden.

He shakes his head, walks down the hall to Jonathon’s office. As he gets closer, he can hear the angry, raised voice of a woman. When he knocks on the door and is admitted in despite protests from the woman inside, he finds himself face to face with the blonde that had taken seat cushions to the head earlier. She glares at him frostily before turning back to Jonathon.

“He’s disrupting the patients! I demand that you discipline him!”

“I’ll take it into consideration, Dr. Warren.”

“Consideration?! The man is a menace!” She drew herself up. “If you don’t do something about him, I will take it up to the directors.” She turned and stormed out.

Jonathon Richter looked at the open office door moodily and sighed. “This is not what I was hoping for when they told me I’d be running the psyche ward.”

“Sorry. It’s tough all around.”

“So I’ve heard. Apparently Morrison gave you reign over the entire hospital. Figures he’d go with his A-game. How bad is it?”

“Morgue might be full of crooks. My nursing staff is equal numbers scared and unsavory. My new plastic surgeons hate each other and one’s a pain in my ass. Pediatrics is sitting on a knife’s edge. Diagnostics is in shambles. The psyche ward appears to have a patient for a doctor.”

“Oh, so you’ve met Murdock, then?” Jonathon smiles.

“He dragged me behind a table where he and a patient role-played. Against ducks.”

“He’s very unorthodox. But the patients love him and his methods are incredibly effective.”

“And Dr. Warren?”

“A more practical side of medicine. She believes in by the book. Both have their place. I just wish their place wasn’t to drive each other up the wall.” He sighs, rubs his temples. “And I wish we weren’t right next to the morgue. Can you fix that anytime soon?”

“I’ll try. They been giving you trouble?”

“The big one with the tattoo, yes. I caught him and one of my new orderlies menacing a patient. I forbid them from contacting that patient again, and threw the big one back to autopsy. But Reed doesn’t do anything.”

“I’m going there next.”

“Godspeed. And while you’re there, watch Dr. Reed. He’s been acting strange ever since Dr. Skerritt left. I have my suspicions about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He may be a duck.”

*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^^**^*^*^*^*^*^

 

Dr. Elijah Reed is not a duck. It might be easier if he was.

Dr. Reed was older than himself, but where long shifts of constant walking and working had kept him thin and trim, nights sitting in the autopsy had done the opposite. Dr. Reed was heavyset, soft around the middle, with a perpetual cough and a quickly receding hairline.

“What do you want, Dr. Smith?” He spat, shuffling some files from one place to another.

“I wanted to come down and check on your new assistants. I’ve been given the responsibility of making sure the hospital runs smoothly.”

“Well, isn’t that an honor. They’re fine. I run a tight ship.”

“Not what I hear from the psyche ward.”

“What, from Richter? Well, tell him I already disciplined Mr. Hammonds, so he has nothing to worry about.”

“Even so, I want to meet your new assistants.” His tone was as even as he could possibly make it. 

Dr. Reed scowled at him. He returned with a calm stare of his own.

Dr. Reed jerked, like he was a horse with an annoying fly. “Hammonds! Ariel! Jackson!”

From the shadows, autopsy and morgue workers begin to appear. The first was a young woman with a cigarette tucked behind a bejeweled ear. She had a scowl on her face and chewed her gum loudly. She was wearing jeans far too tight for the workplace, and a shirt that did much the same.

The second was a tall, shuffling man in about his thirties. He fixed John with a gaze for a moment, assessing, before turning his eyes to look boredly at a point in the middle of nowhere. He kept his left side angled away from the others, keeping to the darker shadows in the dimly lit room.

The last was a giant man with black hair and an anchor on his arm. He stood totally calm, with a respectful nod towards John as he stood beside the woman. He was easily the size of Dr. Baracus. Everything he did was controlled and careful, and had he not talked with Dr. Richter, he might have considered the large man to be the best one out of three.

“Dr. John Smith is here to talk to you. He’s a big wig from upstairs, so mind your manners. Jackson, try not to stutter.”

Jackson said nothing.

He decided to start with the giant man. “You are?”

“Eric Hammonds, sir.”

“How are you doing here, son?”

“Best job I ever had.”

The woman, Ariel, laughed.

He chose to ignore them both. “I have talked to Dr. Richter. There was apparently a disturbance with you, a patient, and an orderly?”

“Just stepped in to give a hand. I’m not familiar with the policies dealing with that type of patient. I may have gone too far. Dr. Reed has already spoken to me about it.”

He makes a note on his clipboard. “In the future, you will stay out of the psyche ward. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” The man nodded eagerly.

He turned to the next assistant. “You are?”

“Ariel Dominguez.” Snap. The gum was popping in her mouth. 

“You realize that eating food in a place where dead bodies are kept is ill-advised?”

She just stared at him, uncomprehending.

“How are you doing here?”

“Good. Great. So great I wanna go back to work. Can I go now?” She snapped her gum loudly. He wrote a note down. 

“Yes. You two can go back to work. What exactly do you two do down here?”

“Filing.” Snap.

“I assist the Doctor with the deceased.”

He nods, and they melt back into the darkness. They really needed to put up more lights in this place.

He walk to the third assistant. “And who are you?”

No answer.

“Answer the man, Jackson!” Dr. Reed ordered. John thought about turning and telling him to leave with his other ghouls, but the man seemed to shift out of his silence.

“Sabrenn Jackson.” His voice was low and quiet.

“Sabrenn? That’s an interesting name.”

More silence.

A few more questions were asked, and John found himself getting frustrated. Mr. Jackson seemed content with one word answers or silence.

He finally gave up and dismissed the man back to the darkness. Jackson nodded to him, and then had to turn back into the shadows, exposing the side he kept angled away. The burn scars on his face were old, but time had not eased them enough to stop John’s knee-jerk reaction of sympathy. The man shuffled away and disappeared into the darkness after his companions.

“That one isn’t great, but we do our job well. Always a learning curve. Wouldn’t trade one of them. “ Reed said sardonically.

“I’m glad to see everything’s going well. How is the storage? Everything working correctly?”

“Fine.” The answer was quick and curt. “Anything else?”

John could feel his welcome disappearing fast. Time to go. “Not today. Let me know if you have any trouble.”

“Not a problem. We’ll call. Do lunch.” Reed smiles at him, teeth badly yellowed.

He leaves after that.

On his way back upstairs, he has to stop and take a breath. The smell of the morgue is overpowering, and the lack of light is crippling. 

And he’d bet money Jonathon was right.

Ariel shouldn’t have even passed the interview. Hammonds was worrying. He said all the right things, but Jonathon would have told him if the man had ‘gone too far’. He knew the difference between ignorance and sadism. And Jackson seemed to have no personality whatsoever. Reed ruled them with an iron fist.

Take that into account with how quickly he was dismissed when he mentioned the cold storage, he’d bet his pension that Reed was hiding something. He and Skerritt had been close before this unpleasant business got started.

There was a lot of worrisome additions to this hospital. He could only hope that he could get them straightened out before things got ugly.


	2. It got Ugly

Things got ugly exactly three days later.

Russel Morrison had called him into the conference room with all the directors present and three stiff and very pissed off State police officers. Now he was doing his best to gain ground as he and Russ fought with the lead investigator.

“You cannot just come in here and start dragging employees down to the station. Morale is bad enough as it is!”

“We may have stumbled onto a huge identity theft ring. I will not let this go. We will question who we have to.” Hands planted on the conference table, she leaned in with her ultimatum. Russ glared back.

“But you will not do it on hospital time. We have an obligation to provide care.”

“Which we can’t do if you start taking our staff away.”

“I’m sure that doing the next nose job or healing some kid’s sore stomach is important, but this takes priority.” She said, shooting John a condescending look.

“The hell it does.”

“I don’t think I like your attitude, Dr. Smith.”

“Get used to it.”

“You may think of some of the things we do as trivial, Officer Sosa, but I can assure you that if you take my staff and something horrible happens, god forbid, any one that dies will be on your department.” Russ cut in.

“From what I can see, your staff isn’t doing all that well anyway.”

“All the more reason not to handicap it further.”

“If my suspicions are correct, then you have an illegal operation running out of your hospital, and your stonewalling will make you an accessory!” She snapped.

“And if your suspicions are wrong, you will have disrupted the entire hospital, destroyed morale, and ruined our reputation, which, might I add, will come with its own legal action.” Morrison growled in return.

“Wouldn’t you want to know if this was happening right under your nose?!”

“That is not what I was saying. I’m saying that I refuse to let you mobilize a goddamn task force and tear through my hospital searching for and taking my staff for just associating with Dr. Skerritt. There are better ways to approach this than guns blazing, or didn’t they teach you that in the academy?” 

“Oh really? And what might you suggest?”

“Shift change happens at regular intervals. You can talk to them when they get off shift.” John said.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Smith was it?” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “I know that it must seem very easy to you, being a surgeon and all, but if I wait until the shifts get over with, there is more of a chance that they will know I’m looking for them.”

“I’m sorry, Officer Sosa was it? I know it must seem like a very simple solution to you to take them all now and win with the element of surprise, but you’re in a hospital. In hospitals, gossip is a national pastime. They already know you’re here.”

“Then I should get to them before they can get their stories straight.”

“Again-hospital. You have no concept of how fast information moves here. If they didn’t have their stories straight five minutes after you walked it, they definitely do when you leave this room.”

“Convenient.”

“No. Medicine.”

“If you don’t have a warrant, which I’m guessing you do not since you summoned the board instead of just calling in the dogs, then the point is moot. All you have are suspicions and suspicions are not enough to disrupt this hospital. When you have something concrete, I will be willing to deal.” Russ broke in before Sosa could fire back. “Is the board agreed?”

The board, which had been woodenly watching the argument, nodded heads fervently. They were so unprepared to deal with something on this magnitude, they would have agreed to follow Russ off a cliff if it saved their reputations.

“Then I will be happy to have security show you the way out.”

“We can find our own way, thank you.” She returned icily. 

“Yes, but I’d hate to find that one of my staff managed to wander off with you. Not that I don’t…trust you. You understand?”

“We’ll be back with a warrant.”

“May the justice system never fail.” Russ said cheerfully.

After officer Sosa left, Russ spent forty-five minutes calming the board, extolling the virtues of the new staff, and generally laying it on thick with a trowel. The board left happy, and they retired to his office.

 

Sitting down, Russ poured him some coffee. 

“This is the worst damn coffee I ever tasted. Tell me again why I came out of retirement?”

“The desperate cries of the helpless.”

“The board is always a pain in my ass. Always. How are things on your end?”

“It may have been better to let the police haul them off.”

“Really?”

“No. No, some of them are crooks, no doubt about it. But I’ve seen a couple that are gems under the crap, and if we let the state police stomp around here we’ll never find them again.”

“How poetic. Give me a rundown.”

“Of the six surgeons, not including myself, I have two new plastic surgeons. Both don’t like each other, and Dr. Peck may be scamming the other departments. His area is too well stocked for what the hospital is currently going through, but no other department is complaining of an excessive shortage, so I don’t know how he’s doing it. Dr. Angel is ingratiating himself with the rest of the staff, but Rosalita doesn’t like him.”

“Rosalita…Rosalita…Oh yes, she’s one of the nurses, right? Not head nurse, but one of the ones in line. I remember her. Good gut instincts.”

“She hates him.”

“That doesn’t bode well.”

“No, it doesn’t. Pediatrics is doing fairly well, but we may need to get one of the new doctors into AA. Emily caught him drinking in a supply closet yesterday.”

“Jesus.”

“The other two are doing well. Pediatrics is the best department we have running right now. Diagnostics is struggling. There are no competent doctors, and Maggie has been taking rotations down there, but I can’t keep sparing her, and diagnostics is not her specialty. The psyche ward is oscillating between by the book and anarchy, but seems to actually function. Still having trouble with the nurses.”

“And the morgue?”

“You know what I think about the morgue.”

“Technicians didn’t find anything down there when they checked the refrigeration units.”

“Yes. But would they know what to look for?”

Russ sighed. “I never should have returned that call.”

John didn’t say anything. He sipped the awful coffee and grimaced.

“Right…well, this needs to end now. I told you before that you needed to watch over the departments, now I’m giving you free rein. Do what you need to do to get this mess sorted out with the staff. I’ll back you, so long as you don’t stage a goddamn inquisition. Threaten, bribe, push, gang up on, whatever the hell you need to do to get this place in shape, do it. For god’s sakes, start with the nurses. Nothing in this hospital will get done without them and if you can get them on your side, then the rest of them will have to fall in line.”

John grinned into his cup. He’d already thought of that, and already had a list of nurses he was going to start with.

“We need our house in order for when that Sosa woman comes back. I will not have her acting like some smug pain in the ass know it all when she returns. I want a 360 turnaround, and a list of who I need to fire for when the board members stop sitting on their hands.” He grineed humorlessly. “Think you can handle that?”

“Learned from the best. Great coffee, by the way.”

“You’d better learn how to lie before you leave this office.”

They clinked mugs over the desk.

*^*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Nurse Ambrosia was five foot six, and made of concrete. She was the head nurse and had been for as long as he’d been around. He suspected that she made some deal with the devil, because her appearance and her demeanor hadn’t changed in all that time. Beside her stood Casper, a muscular male nurse and Rosalita, a Hispanic nurse with dyed red hair and a rose tattoo on her neck. Settled in the room were seven or eight more nurses and a slew of orderlies…roughly half the nursing staff.

“I know you’re wondering why you’re here. Russel Morrison asked me to get this hospital into shape. No doubt you already have opinions on this matter, but you will all agree that changes must be made to improve this environment.”

There are nods.

“I asked you here because you were not hired two weeks before Dr. Skerritt left, you have been recommended by your peers, and you have consistently done what you can to keep this hospital running through these hard times.”

Some of the nurses shifted at Skerritt’s name, some dark looks filtered through, but no one interrupted.

“I’m going to clean up this mess. But to do that, I need your help. Everyone knows that if the nursing staff falls apart, so does the hospital, and the doctor’s staff would be lost without the nurses shepherding them to the next patient.”

A few laughs.

“What I want you to do first is to tighten ranks in the nurse’s department. Find the ones that aren’t doing much, and light a fire under them. Find the ones that are scared, and reassure them. Start moving in packs if you have too. Find me the nurses and orderlies that are causing the trouble, and bring them to me. Don’t let them make their own group. Separate the troublemakers from each other, neutralize the threat they cause. And start getting the supplies out. Let the other staff see how you are dealing with this problem, and be a good example.”

“What do you want us to do with the ones that won’t go to you?” Rosalita asked. Ambrosia pursed her lips. Obviously she had a few in mind already.

“I’ll leave that up to my very competent and intelligent nursing staff to decide. I have full confidence in their abilities.”

The smile that started to break across her face might have frightened a lesser man. 

^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

A little while later he happened to pass by an open hall door and watched as Dr. Peck, dressed in nursing scrubs wheeled a full cart down the hall. He watched as the young man slipped into a room, dragging the cart behind him. He came back out a few minutes later, with an empty cart and a nonchalant jaunt down the hallway.

After a few minutes, he went to the door Peck had disappeared into and opened it. 

It was a supply closet, one that had been badly suffering over the last few weeks. Now it had a full stock of gloves and other medical supplies.

“Damn! She’s gone.”

He glances down about a foot to see Rosalita peering around him.

“She?”

“The medical supplies fairy. We’ve been getting in stock all week, haven’t found the person doing it.”

 

“Not just the normal deliveries?”

“Are you kidding? Skerritt was such a cheapskate, he gave us the worthless stuff. That stuff is one contract for another six months, that is all we’re getting in. This stuff is good, I mean, real good. I had gloves that actually fit today.”

“Been happening all over?”

“No, just down here so far. But it’s the old trickle effect, you know? Our good stuff goes to other departments, pretty soon we all got good supplies.”

“Hunh.” 

“Wish I knew who was doing it. I’d give them a big old kiss.”

“Thought you said it was a she.”

“At this point, I’d kiss anyone. If it was a handsome boy, that’s just a bonus.”

He closed the door and filed away the information. Telling Rosalita what he saw would be premature. Besides, things spoken in this hospital, even to someone like Rosalita, who had a fanatical desire to keep secrets until she was dead, had a habit of becoming gossip at the speed of sound. And if Dr. Peck was doing this much good, it would be best to keep it a secret. For now. After all, if he was doing something illegal, John didn’t want the rest of the hospital in on it, and if he was going to continue to restock the hospital stores, might as well let him do it. The less the young man knew about what he knew, the better.

But if his intentions were sincere, Dr. Peck had raised in his mind a few notches.

 

*^^*^^*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Yes, you do. You have been caught multiple times, and unless you want to lose your position, you will get yourself under control.”

“You can’t fire me.” Dr. Bartholomew said stubbornly.

“No. But what I can do, is send you downstairs to work with Dr. Reed in the morgue. I will not have an alcoholic prescribing medicine to children.”

“I have it under control.”

“You’ll have it under control in the morgue. This is not a discussion. This is an ultimatum. Lay off the booze, and you stay in pediatrics. Go to AA, stay in pediatrics. Argue with me, and you go to the morgue.”

“Dr. Stewart-”

“Dr. Stewart is one of the ones lobbying for this. You don’t like it? You have two choices. Either your resign or you go to the morgue. This is your only chance.” He takes in the defeated slump of the older man’s shoulders.

“I just don’t know how…it started off as a way to de-stress, now I can’t function without it, and you want me to. Do you want me to be a good doctor, or do you want me not to drink?”

“From what I hear, you are a good doctor. But the alcohol has nothing to do with it. My guess is that it’s stopping you from being a great doctor. I want you to start setting up meetings with Dr. Richter as well. He can help.”

“AA and the psyche ward? I’ll be a laughingstock! I‘ll never be able to hold me head up again!”

“You aren’t doing so well with that right now anyway. And if you leave without trying to address the problem and manning up, it’ll be even worse for you. I’m leaving this decision in your hands. You know what you have to do.”

He leaves the older man then, walks away. 

He walks the halls for about ten minutes, then navigates the back halls to where he left Dr. Bartholomew. The older man and Dr. Baracus were talking.

“I just…this is blackmail, pure and simple.”

“You may think that, but I think it’s a good idea. What happens if you hurt one of these kids man? I know you won’t mean too, but that alcohol is going to possess you and one day, you gonna do something you think is alright and it won’t be.”

“But my reputation-”

“Your reputation gonna be in worse shape if you do something that hurts somebody than if you try to take control of the problem.”

“But the staff will look down on me. I will lose all respect.”

“Some of staff will look down on you. Others will respect you more for taking control of your life. I will respect you more. And besides, it’s either that or work with those creepy-ass ghouls downstairs. You already know what choice you gotta make now man. You’re just arguing to argue.”

Dr. Baracus plants a big hand on Dr. Bartholomew’s shoulder. The older man finally slumps. Defeated.

“Alright…alright, I’ll go.”

John has to smile. Dr. Baracus, for his terrifying appearance, is one of the good guys. And if this little episode was any indication, a keeper.

Thank god. He didn’t want to be the one to fire him anyway.

 

Simplicity is not stupidity. People often believe that if one is simple, then that means they are stupid. It’s something that he takes advantage of often.

By seeming simple, he finds himself privy to a great deal of information. Not all of that information is good. Some of it is, in fact, good information about very bad things.

The problem then becomes…what does one do with said information? Knowing that by exposing it…it could then cost him dearly?

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Dr. Murdock is sitting beside Rosalita, chatting innocently while she presses an ice pack to one of his surgeon’s faces.

“Looks like he got you pretty good, Dr. Peck. Did you catch his name?” He asks with a sigh. The hospital had begun its turnaround. An entirely different beast than it was two weeks ago. 

He’s tired. 

“It was an orderly. Harold Johnson.” Dr. Murdock supplies helpfully.

Johnson was on the list. He was a constant source of trouble.

“And why did he do it?”

“I was on diagnostics rotation today. I caught him stealing supplies from the pharmacy. When I asked him why he thought Thorazine should be given to the pediatrics ward, we got into an altercation. Dr. Murdock showed up before it got serious.”

“And he just left? Where is he?”

“Well, Dr. Smith, it is the damndest thing, he suddenly started acting erratically, and to prevent himself from injuring himself or others, he was moved downstairs to a room where he might calm down. Get in touch with his inner self.” Murdock says helpfully, like an eager student.

“…So you sent him to the psyche ward?”

“Third room in the solitary confinement ward. He was acting crazy. I was only doing as I’d been trained, Dr. Smith.” Murdock said with perfect sincerity.

He chooses to ignore the fact that Rosalita is leaning in to check Dr. Peck’s face more to hide the smile on her own. He chooses to ignore the gaping holes in their story. He does take note of the look on Dr. Peck’s face, one of ill-disguised defiance. He has a feeling that this isn’t the first fist fight his surgeon has been in. 

“Well…There’s only one thing to do then, with a fight of this manner between a surgeon and an orderly.” He says seriously, gauging the look of anger on Dr. Peck’s face.

“And that would be, Dr. Smith?” The younger man looks at him levelly, tone cool.

 

“To tell you to duck next time, kid. People will think I beat you. We’re not a teaching hospital, I don’t need that kind of reputation here.” He chuckles at the dumbstruck look on his underling’s face. He turns back to Dr. Murdock.

“Dr. Murdock, when Mr. Johnson stops acting crazy, inform him I’d like to see him in my office. In the meantime, I think it that since everyone has been working so hard, that the nurses deserve a break. So if you can swing it, don’t let him back out with them for another few hours.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rosalita fist pump the air. He’d admonish her later about unprofessional behavior. He has to go to his office now. 

He leaves them behind, whispering together. He gets on the elevator, gets off at the second floor, enters his office, and sist at his desk.

And sighs again at the mound of mail and paperwork. Being chief surgeon…head of the staff at a hospital…it generated a great deal of paperwork. He spends about an hour catching up on old paperwork, then breaks from that to deal with the mail.

A majority of it is junk, memos from various medical suppliers. After that are several letters regarding his staff, a few background checks because previous ones had either been lost or not done at all, some material from previous hospitals. A few packages.

The background checks tell him very little, aside that he really needed Morrison to fire some people when the freeze was lifted. And that Dr. Baracus had a colorful youth. But the materials that he’d gotten from the hospitals the man had worked said the same thing-exemplary record, great with kids. Short temper with people that harmed them. That had got him fired from his last hospital.

He found himself liking the big man more and more.

He tucked away all the letters and began opening packages. Samples. Reading materials. Photos.

Curious, he pulls the photos from the brown postal envelope. There are quite a few pictures of two log books. As he’s looking at the pictures, he recognizes Ambrosia’s handwriting. Puzzled, he flips through the photos.

More pages of the logbooks, now pictures of…the morgue, dim lighting and all. The focus of the picture is the face of a dead man.

He begins to feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

The last picture is of the same man, leaving a building. The back of this photo feels different, so he turns it.

_Mr. Andre Addison._

_49._

_Scar on left ankle, broken nose, pins in hip._

_Admitted into BRMC Morgue 5/14/2011._

_Picture taken 5/16/2011._

_**Dead men don’t walk.** _

“Shit.” He breathes.

*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^**^*^^*^

“What exactly am I looking at here? What kind of asshole pulls this stunt?”

“I don’t think it’s a stunt. I think we have a serious problem.”

“You think?! Not only do we have a failing hospital staff, our officer Sosa is going to be insufferable when she finds out about this. Who sent these, anyway?”

“No idea. But I think it’s someone inside the hospital. Package is unmarked.”

“We catch them on security cameras?…Forget I said that.” Russ bows his head. “Next time I see Skerrit I’ll shoot him myself.”

“We have to turn it over to the police.” His mouth tastes bitter at that statement, but it has to be done.

“Any idea who might have handed over the photos? We need to have an idea. I’d like to talk to them before the cops get them.”

He is startled a bit by the statement. Russ had changed in his retirement. Usually he’d be the one dragging the offending party by the ear to the police. 

But he has a hospital to deal with now, he reasoned.

“The only people I can think of that might have access to all these logbooks is someone in the morgue. The first one, the one with Amrosia’s handwriting? I think that’s the arrival book. She signs that they made it through the front door, hand the book down to the morgue for their reports and records. These one’s here? I think those are morgue logbooks and records. The pictures are showing all the times and dates that our patient arrives, and what happens to him.”

“It looks legitimate.”

“But look at the two arrival times. Two identical arrival times. You compare it to the others, their arrival times from when the body enters the hospital to the time it gets to the morgue is about fifteen minutes.”

“Could just be shoddy book keeping?”

“For just a couple of times? I think somebody’s doctoring the log books. Only a morgue employee would do it.”

“But why? Why doctor the books?”

He winces. “Maybe to hide the fact that the body isn’t in the hospital the whole time?” He points to the picture with the writing on the back.

“Oh god.” Russ covers his eyes with a hand.

John waits patiently as Russ thinks. Russ lets out a sigh. 

“Call Officer Sosa.”

^**^^*^**^*^^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^

The autopsy workers and Doctor Reed are marched out through the front doors of the hospital in front of the staff and patients. The rumors and speculation later that day will run wild, and axe murders will probably be involved by noon. 

When the reach the station, Sosa takes each of them aside into an interrogation room.

Dr. Reed oozes confidence and sniveling whining in turn-he gives her nothing except a desire to wash her hands, but she knows he’s hiding something. He’s too nervous, too willing to smear his upstairs colleagues for their…alarmist behavior. 

She has to tell Ariel Dominguez to spit out her gum three times before finally threatening her with a night in jail if she kept popping. After that, Ariel just sat boredly in her seat, looking around and asking stupid and inflammatory questions, like who she could sleep with to get a job like Sosa’s. Sosa gives her an extra few hours alone in the room for that statement.

Eric Hammonds was polite, concise, and guilty as hell of something. She just wasn’t sure what yet. She’d seen men like him before. Seen how congeniality could turn into brutality at the drop of a hat.

Sabrenn Jackson was silent. Just quiet. His answers came back in monosyllables when possible. She finally got exasperated with him, asked him if everything had been so simple for him in life. He just smiled. It was vaguely creepy. 

After ten hours of interrogation, her superiors told her to cut them loose. The photos were not good evidence, they said. The suspects were to be turned loose. Sabrenn was the first one out of processing and the first to leave, followed by Ariel. They caught a cab together and left. Hammonds and Reed made noise about lawyers before they did the same. 

*^*^*^^**^*^^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

When he gets the call from the nurse’s station about a strange patient being brought in, he thinks that it might be an addict and some new form of drug, or a strange disease never seen by the hospital.

It’s Ariel Dominguez. 

The woman is spitting venom at the nurse trying to disinfect a gash on her forehead while other are gathering up blankets and clean clothes. She’s soaking wet.

“What in the world happened to you?!” 

“Nothing.” Her voice becomes suddenly subdued, sullen. “I don’t know nothing. He just went nuts on me.”

“Who did?”

“Jackson. He’s batshit crazy.”

“What happened?” 

“We took the cab back from that 5-oh bitch’s place. He tells the cabbie to stop in the middle of nowhere. Bad part of town. And I, like a good coworker, step out with him. We were walking, we go across a bridge and all a sudden he grabs me around the waist and throws me off the side. I coulda died!”

“He just throws you off a bridge? For no reason?”

“Yeah. What the hell, maybe he’s some sorta sociopath. He’s creepy enough.”

He decides not to point out that she herself works in the morgue. “We’ll call the police.”

“Yeah. You do that. Before he kills somebody.”

He walks away after that, mentally cursing the last director for leaving him this goose egg. As he rounds the corner, he runs into three familiar faces.

“Doctors Baracus, Peck, and Murdock. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“Uh…nothing?” Peck flashes a smile at him. He glares at the younger man.

Peck doesn’t back down. He can feel respect grow a bit for the young man. “Well, as long as you’re all doing nothing, why don’t we take a ride?”

“Where we going?” Murdock is grinning manically at him.

“House call. Apparently our Mr. Jackson has decided to come down with a case of the crazy. You should be a great help, Dr. Murdock.”

“We’re going after a guy that tried to kill somebody? Is this such a great plan?”

“Relax Dr. Baracus, it’s a wonderful plan. Besides, that’s why I’m having you all come with me.”

“Safety in numbers?”

“He can’t kill all of us, Dr. Peck.” Murdock quipped.

“Wow…I feel so relieved right now.”

“I read that you drove the bus at a past hospital. Want to drive our spare ambulance, Dr. Baracus?”

The grin that broke across the big man’s face was terrifying.

 

*^*^*^

This probably breaks all rules in hospital policy. Not to mention several laws. But even as he sits in the passenger side of the ambulance, he feels strangely at ease with the three men in the vehicle with him, for as little as he knows them. 

“Ambulances are not supposed to go on two wheels!”

“I’ll make sure to tell the director of personnel!” He yells back as another tight turn had them all praying and gripping the walls of the bus.

Baracus was a master of weaving through traffic. And parks, and a section of Bad Rock he didn’t know existed, and-

His stomach hit the floor of the ambulance as it’s wheels went airborne.

“It’s a good thing we’re in an ambulance!” Dr. Peck yelled. “Because my heart might stop at any second!”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?! This is awesome!”

“You’re nuts!”

“You have to be crazy to work in an asylum-OOPH! That was my head, Bosco!”

He files away the information that Dr. Murdock is on first name basis with Dr. Baracus.

“Dr. Smith!”

“Yeah kid?”

“Why are we doing this? Can’t we call the police?”

“Something’s not right, and I can’t count on them not to screw it up.”

“Want to fill us in on it?”

“From what I know about Dominguez, she’s entirely self-serving-she wouldn’t hop out of a cab to walk a coworker home. That’s entirely too benevolent. Especially if it was a bad part of town! And I’d be very surprised if she doesn’t have a damn good idea about what’s going on in the morgue. Along with Jackson.”

“Why do you think that?”

“When I first questioned her, she denied knowing what happened, and then she blamed it on him. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to ask Jackson and find out, even if I have to do it one syllable at a time.”

The tires screeched to a halt.

“…uh…I’m gonna take a crazy guess and say Jackson’s house…is the one on fire.” Dr. Baracus said, watching the fire crews attempting to put out the blaze.

He stares for a moment at it. “Well…shit. Alright, everyone out. Look around, look for some clues as to where he‘s gone.”

*^*^*^*^*^*


End file.
